VMware Cloud on AWS 2018 Update

Just today VMware released their recent plan for the VMware on AWS service. The big announcement is the availability of London region is now live and soon Frankfurt region will be online, bringing WMConAWS to Europe. Something people knew about but now its live.

Next big announcement is stretched cluster across two AZs within a region, using vSAN stretched cluster to provide zero-RPO synchronous data replication. Something that was needed to take advantage of AWS infrastructure, as part of the deployment NSX VXLAN is also deployed across the cluster to provide consistent layer 2 network. Stretched clusters are currently in tech preview. Further vSAN features are available such as deduplication and compression.

Enhancements have been made to Hybrid Cloud Extension (HCX) to work out of the box for large migrations.

The MSP model now includes VMware on AWS along with solution compentcies for partners, both of which I will be leveraging in my day job.

VMware Cost Insight can be used to see the cost of moving an environment direct to the cloud service up front using real world data. As part of an assessment, vRNI can be used to show dependencies.

Further DRaaS improvements have been added, using SRM v8.

Whats also handy is there is now a published roadmap, this documents the available services and what is currently developing and planning. VMWonAWS roadmap can be found at